New Grants Target Quality Standards, Transition, Complex Care

PALO ALTO – Five new grants announced today by the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health address a breadth of issues aimed at improving the system of care for children with special health care needs.

“Children with chronic and complex health conditions often face lifelong dependence on an array of health care and other services, many of which are designed for adults and few of which are part of an integrated system,” said Edward Schor, MD, senior vice president at the foundation. “The foundation is proud of its continuing contributions to improving the systems upon which these children and their families rely.”

Quality Standards: A grant to the National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP) builds on prior grants that led to the development and early adoption of national consensus standards for system serving children and youth with special health care needs. The current grant will continue refinement and dissemination of the standards, which are being adopted widely around the country.

Transition to Adult Health Care: The National Alliance to Advance Adolescent Health will lead an expert committee to develop recommendations and actions steps for advancing payment innovations for transition services as youth move from pediatric to adult health care.

Intensive Care Management: A project at Stanford University will evaluate a pilot replication of a program begun at the Oregon Health and Science University, Novel Interventions in Children’s Healthcare, which offers intensive case management for children whose conditions cannot be controlled despite the best of medical care. These poor outcomes for children may be due in part to their families’ challenging psychological and social circumstances, so families are assigned to an “interventionist” who is available 24/7 and uses an intensive combination of family-based and skills-based interventions.

Complex Care Management: Two large health care systems in Oregon have been studying how to most effectively and efficiently serve children with complex conditions who depend on multiple specialists and have the most complex medical and social needs. The Oregon Pediatric Improvement Partnership will collaborate with those plans to develop team-based care for those children and disseminate the lessons learned and materials developed, within Oregon and nationally.

Using Medicaid Waivers to Fund Home and Community-Based Care: Medicaid waivers from the federal government allow states to provide home and community-based services for children with complex conditions, enabling them to live at home rather than in institutions. Researchers from the University of Virginia School of Nursing will review current state Medicaid waivers that specifically include services for children with medical complexity. The goal is to determine how waivers currently are being used and which waivers seem best suited to meet the needs of these children and their families.

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关于露西尔·帕卡德儿童健康基金会： 露西尔·帕卡德儿童健康基金会是一家成立于1997年的公益慈善机构。其使命是通过领导力和直接投资，提升儿童健康的优先地位，并改善儿童医疗保健的质量和可及性。基金会与斯坦福露西尔·帕卡德儿童医院以及斯坦福大学的儿童健康项目紧密合作。通过其特殊医疗保健需求儿童项目，基金会支持建立高质量的医疗保健体系，从而改善儿童的健康状况并提升家庭的生活质量。